I wish more people built stuff as well, but I think you're confusing passion and profit. There are fewer people with those skills because the markets are changing - there's just less demand than there used to be.
I don't think it is just markets, or any confusion with passion and profit. Having grown up in Brooklyn in the late 60s/early 70s and then some, I have seen regulation quell a lot of hacking or making in the US. It struck home when I tried to buy my kids chemistry sets in the 2000s. Baking soda and vinegar basically, that was it, due to all of the safety and litigation concerns.
I am not calling for a wild west mentality, but the opposite of trying to legislate intelligence is a sure way to stagnation and oppression of creativity, passion and possible profit.
I was making blackpowder from my hobby store-bought kit in the 70s, and playing with all sorts of chemicals. My mom & dad did not discourage me. I had to setup my darkroom after they went to bed, since we lived in a railroad apartment. If my Dad got up to go the shared hallway bathroom, there went my negatives or prints!
I went on to melt and cast aluminum, solar ovens, tesla coils, lab mice, the whole shebang.
Anyway, I am optimistic by some of the things I have seen kids do on YouTube in the US, but some of them seem like they have been funded by a huge corporation (VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92M5qcjDkaU). I give my kids as much support as I can, but even they will not accumulate the materials present in that video even with a singular-purposed feat such as that.
My son had told he might not have been able to bring his science project to school, a home-made cathode ray tube, for safety reasons even though the teacher knew it didn't emit harmful Xrays at the power and configuration of the setup. He finally proved it, and was allowed, but there were other 'mysterious' concerns about such devices and the local police.
Now I have lived in SE Asia for almost 8 years. Chinese farmers/tinkerers are building home made submarines to harvest ocean bottom sea life that are so much a part of Chinese cuisine. That and trike planes, basically tricycles with a hang glider and a huge propeller on back - sort of a real hacked ultralight you would see in the US. The scene is surprisingly large in the light of such a heavy-handed government.
Even now where I am in East Java, people hack together some weird stuff, and the police don't stop them or pull them over - imagine a train of dollies being pulled by a small 125cc scooter on a secondary road with passengers! Scary, but I am glad to be around creativity and people using their wits to solve problems with constrained resources.
